James Britton Boone Buchanan Cranfill was born September 12, 1858 in Parker County, Texas. His father was a doctor, Eaton A. Cranfill, and his mother was Martha Jane Galloway Cranfill. The family lived in numerous places around Texas while he was a youth. J. B. studied medicine with his father, beginning when he was twelve and passed the Texas Medical Board examination when he was twenty-one. However Cranfill still enjoyed many of the typical experiences of other young men his age.
His memoirs are included in a fascinating book called “Dr. J. B. Cranfill’s Chronicle, A Story of Life in Texas.” In it he recounted his life experiences and it is very interesting to read. His family had moved from Kentucky to Upshur County, then in succession to Denton County and Parker County before moving back to Upshur County. He has fond recollections of family members such as his Uncle John who later died from wounds received in one of the last clashes of the Civil War, the battle that took place in Mansfield, Louisiana. Cranfill noted that his Uncle John had married not long before enlisting in the Confederate Army and left behind his long coat and top hat. John’s young widow later remarried and Cranfill recalled being annoyed at seeing her new husband wearing his Uncle John’s clothing and top hat.
Cranfill was a boy during the Civil War. Another one of his memories of that period was learning that his father, then serving as a Confederate Army doctor, had become ill himself at Camp Ford near Tyler. His father had likely suffered a bad spell with his heart. His mother packed up the four children and took them to Smith County to visit him. Cranfill recalled the warm look on his father’s face when they walked in to see him as he lay in his tent. The family stayed at Camp Ford for six weeks while his father recovered. From that visit, Cranfill remembered little incidents of how the soldiers responded with kindness to him and his siblings while they were there. Despite his personal feelings of affinity toward these men and the various causes of the war, Cranfill was opposed to slavery and Texas succession.
Cranfill wrote that although his father was not physically wounded in the war, he was deeply and negatively affected. Although he was trained as a professional doctor, the family had little in the way of material possessions as times were difficult in post-war Texas. They picked up their belongings and headed for a new place to live where opportunities might be better. The family traveled by horse and ox drawn cart through Freestone County and on to Comal County where they had other relatives. There, they rented a farm that had not been cultivated in many years, if ever. They proceeded to clear it of weeds and rattlesnakes, planting corn and cotton. The natural growth included prickly pear cactus, which they harvested and fed to the cattle after burning off the thorns. After a year of this, they moved again, this time to Gonzales County, where he recalled his mother teaching him to read from a book called “McGuffey’s First Reader.” He did well with this “home schooling” and it opened up new doors for him, intellectually.
In Gonzales County, his father returned to the practice of medicine, and it grew into a means to accumulate enough to support the family and set some surplus funds aside. He recalled that this was also where he was able to attend his first “sure enough” school. He also remembered being given his first pair of boots, although he did not own them long before he accidentally lost them in a well during an argument with his older brother. However, they did not stay in Gonzales County long before his father bought a place and began to operate a very small farm in Bastrop County. It was 1868, with only three years having passed since the end of the war. They had moved again, though only forty miles away.
In Bastrop County, he became aware of the expanding cattle industry which had begun with people first claiming the wild livestock that populated the area. He began to long to join the young men on cattle drives in which trail bosses would gather the cattle, brand them with a “road brand” and drive herds north to markets. At the age of ten or eleven, he had a while to wait. He worked on the farm where they grew their own corn and melons. It was during this period that he recalled eating his first biscuit, as flour from wheat had previously been quite scarce. He also said that his physician father was a soft touch for random needy people and was often taken advantage of by them.
Cranfill disliked farm work and his father was well aware of his sons’ growing wanderlust. His father told the boys that if they wanted to leave, he would give them a good horse, tack and some money and that he would welcome them back home when they had decided to return. Cranfill was still too young to leave home anyway, so he said that this declaration “took the starch” out of his desire to run away. He devoted himself to learning and his school work. He also recalled his first adolescent crush as he became platonically captivated at age fourteen with a twenty-one year old stepdaughter of his school teacher. Nothing serious ever became of it, although it left a strong impression. He met the lady who was by then married some years later at a church state convention and confessed his childhood infatuation . As he might have expected, she’d had no awareness of his feelings.
In the 1870s, Cranfill did finally get to take part in his first cattle drive and never forgot the experience. He enjoyed the life and mastered some of the skills. However, he did not become a cowboy. Instead, he took other paths for his life’s work. He taught school for a short while after which he married one of his former students. After practicing medicine briefly and operating a general store, he began a long career in publishing. His first effort was a monthly paper called the Turnersville Advance. Then he he published a weekly called the Gatesville Advance, followed by a daily called the Waco Advance. Cranfill became an ordained Baptist minister in 1890 and was active in the prohibition movement, making an unsuccessful bid as vice president in Prohibition Party’s effort in the 1892 national election.
For a number of years, Cranfill was co-owner of the Baptist publication now known as the Baptist Standard. He was active in denominational affairs in some fashion for the rest of his life. He continued to write and edit publications as the opportunities arose, including articles and books for his friends and contemporaries including B. H. Carroll. J. M. Carroll, George W. Truett and others.
Cranfill was married for over fifty-nine years to Celia Olivia Allen Cranfill until her death on October 31, 1937. He survived her until his own death December 28,1942. Both are buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas.
Cranfill’s motto: “Be kinder to everybody than anybody can be to me, and do it first.”
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